Contemporary classical composition is still classic

Hauschka, Volker Bertelmann, composes music at the sort of rate that most musicians can only dream of. The Düsseldorf-based pianist and composer has created eight albums in as many years. But the quality of these piano-led works belies the rapidity with which they are produced.

However, there’s a triple sharp shrilling from the camphor-wooded spectacled classes of the classical age, or classically aged. While for some a pianos’ skin is a sacred membrane - the very object that produces sensation for the human ear and moreover, senses the pianist’s delicacy or exuberance - for others it must be charmed in order for it to breathe life. It must receive the tattoos of its player, be that the painted chassis, keys and string changes – it represents the modifications to the way modern music has approached the grandest of classical instruments. There are these modifications and then there are Hauschka’s modifications. Hauschka’s instrument is constantly emerging from surgery with an array of bridge enlargements and organ transplants. Ping pong balls attached to the strings, beer bottle caps sit on top, duct tape, pencils, screws, felt, foil, guitar strings… Hauschka plays a painted lady.

The piano’s shift from the antique to the modish reflects the change of perception towards classical music. Yet of BBC Radio’s stalwart stations, those represented by the status of its numbers 1-5, not including the digitial-only 6 and 7, BBC Radio 3’s listening figures sit at the lowest. Of the stations represented by folk content, comprising BBC Radio 2 and 4, Radio 3 has seen a significant drop in its listening figures. While devotees of Radios 2 and 4 seem never to turn off their radios, with yearly airtime hours standing at a colossal 160 million and 120 million respectively, the ageing-with-dignity Radio 3 at its peak modestly had over 14.5 million hours of classical music-driven programmes heard by their audience. The figure now rests at 12 million and has been as low as 10 million in the last few years, over 40 million beneath its closest BBC brethren, Radio 5.

The programmers have made a concerted effort to appeal to the new wave of BBC 3 listeners. As well as the overwhelming emphasis on the antique classic, programming that features jazz and world music are now aired. The trouble is, composers such as Hauschka are unsaddled and thrown into this heterogeneous crèche of anything from minimalist musicians who solely play edible instruments to ethnomusicological divisions splayed from sub-Saharan African kalimba solos to indigenous Australian desert reggae. Praise to the Radio 3 team for sponsoring diversity, but the likes of Hauschka reflect where modern classical music finds itself. Hauschka, Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, Goldmund and co. belong on the classical programming sets, not on the Late Junction alongside the music that to the average Radio 3 listener is the modern equivalent of bringing back from colonial India a slaughtered tiger skin woven neatly into a rug to sit in front of the country house’s Aga. The BBC’s approach to classical music sends out a message that it is sacrosanct; impenetrable to today’s crop of classical composers. Although perhaps controversial, this opinion seems conservative if compared to Ian Trethowan’s, formerly the BBC Director-General, after his time in the position described Radio 3 as ‘a private playground for elitists to indulge in cerebral masturbation’

While the BBC has actively sought out younger audiences, it has done little to change the average Radio 3 listener at a ripe 59 years of age. Just two years ago that was 57. The threat of an old and ageing audience for the station is that their listening figures will continue to decline as their audience pass away. The BBC might opine that their programming is geared towards this demographic and a fresh set of 50-somethings will be on board when some of their current listeners cease to be. However, just last week, ‘Through the Night’, a Radio 3 programme that runs for 6 hours each morning, compiled a set list of exclusively dead composers. By ignoring the new trends in classical composition, they run a further threat of being irrelevant to audiences as the years go by.

Hauschka’s latest studio album Salon des Amateurs is but another to sit on his mantle of unfaltering calibre, character and innovation. Here’s to the hope that radio stations will be bold enough to accept an artist that is paving revolutions in contemporary classical music and yet currently has no identifiable home. It’s not that his profile doesn’t fit, but that stations are ignorant of the evolution.

Salon des Amateurs was released on April 11^th.

Christo Hall
The New Wolf

last time modified: July 14, 2011, 6:35 a.m.